Starter Kit. Idea 301 of 500. Cluster 15
Architecture and engineering drafting services for firms in the Gulf and Europe
The mechanism, from the book
The proof exists in Malabe. What is missing is a thousand small versions of it.
The first step
Take one real drawing from your portfolio and redraw it to the standards used in the Gulf and in Europe, then send it with a price per sheet to 20 small architecture and engineering practices there. Offer to draft one sheet of a live project free. A paid second sheet from any practice is the proof, and its feedback tells you which standard to master first.
- Who pays first
- A small architecture or engineering practice in the Gulf or Europe with a drafting backlog, which pays per sheet delivered on time.
- What leaves today
- Drafting skill trained here is sold at local rates or leaves with the engineer, while the same sheets earn foreign rates elsewhere.
Ask first
- Department of the Registrar of Companies. Ask which business registration suits a drafting service paid by firms abroad.
- Inland Revenue Department. Ask how fees received from clients in the Gulf and Europe are taxed.
Check before you spend
Which drawing standards and software versions each client uses, who owns the drawings, and whether a qualified engineer must sign off any of the work.
Find out these three numbers
- What do small practices abroad pay per drawn sheet today?
- Which drawing standard do most of your target clients work to?
- How quickly must a revised sheet be returned?
A comparison from the book
Cecil Balmond at Arup. Chapter Three
"Cecil Balmond, born in Sri Lanka, was the engineer at Arup"
Sri Lankan engineering already reaches the top of world practice; careful drafting is the first rung of that ladder.
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.